1. Technical Field
One or more embodiments described herein relate generally to autonomous flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle. More specifically, one or more embodiments relate to autonomous landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle.
2. Background and Relevant Art
Aerial photography and videography are valuable tools in many applications, particularly those involving large geographic areas, such as construction, agriculture, mining, real estate, search and rescue, and surveillance. Traditionally, aerial perspectives have been obtained using photography or videography from manned aircraft or satellites. Both of these options are very costly, and neither option provides a cost-effective process to obtain real-time or near real-time imagery.
Due to these limitations, there is increasing interest in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs”) to obtain aerial imagery. For example, a UAV including an on-board camera can easily fly over various geographic areas in order to collect overhead photographs and/or videos. Typically, UAVs are remote controlled, thus necessitating an operator to control the movements of the UAV. This becomes problematic, however, when the UAV is deployed over harsh terrain (e.g., mountains) or over large areas of land. In such cases, an operator would have difficulty finding a control position (e.g., the physical location of the operator) to allow the operator to successfully control the UAV. For instance, mountains or large areas of land will generally not allow an operator to maintain the UAV within a viewing range to successfully operate the UAV.
In some circumstances, the UAV operator does not need to be within a viewing range of the UAV. For example, some conventional UAVs provide an operator real-time video captured from the UAV for long-range remote control of the UAV. In a long-range remote control scenario, however, additional problems arise with conventional UAVs and conventional UAV systems. For example, long-range remote control scenarios often include the need to remotely land a UAV (e.g., in order to recharge a battery). The remote landing process for an operator, however, is often difficult and error-prone, which increases the probability of damaging or destroying a UAV, resulting in considerable expense. In addition, a damaged UAV can delay a project, causing additional time and expense.
Using conventional UAV systems, some operators can become fairly proficient in remotely landing a UAV. Frequently, however, an operator requires extensive training and practice to be able to successfully remotely land a UAV on a consistent basis. The time and expense required to train an operator to perform remote UAV landings is cost prohibitive to many companies that would benefit from the use of a UAV. Moreover, even when adequately trained, an operator still has a fairly high risk of damaging or destroying a UAV during a remote UAV landing.
Thus, there are several disadvantages to current methods for operating and landing a UAV.